Author: Robert

Attention people who dream of visiting the moon, or dancing with aliens on the lunar surface of Mars. I have the passport into the vast, strangeness that is outer space. It will cost you the price of whatever form of music you choose to PAY FOR via The Flaming Lips on their new record titled The Terror. Continue...

One guy who draws all kinds of attention for his every move is Justin Timberlake. People obsess about what he’s doing, or how he got to be the cultural apex of cool to a lot of people, who like a lot of things, and move in a lot of different circles. Ask most people who drive one way or another on the musical highway, JT is not the Jay Leno of pop music, in fact, he’s the Letterman of the game. And when someone who beats Johnny Cash for some hokey award and is speechless for his victory, then dedicates the award to the man; that shows legitimate kudos. Continue...

When you’re a legendary artist, things can get skewed. The early stuff that made your career in the first place is what people want to hear, and very rarely, do people want to stay engaged to whatever new music someone is working on when they come to town. Most people want the hits, the stuff they know. But, sometimes a legend can wind up in a situation that reinvents his career, and a whole new onset of folks get to appreciate the music that they might have once turned their nose up at, but now, are digging through the crates to seek out the original pressings of. Continue...

It’s over. After an exhausting trek into the musical miasma known as SXSW, I came away with a lot more, complex feelings than I had intended to. Within the four days I spent roaming the landscape of downtown Austin in search of new sounds, I was met with some interesting opinions about where music is going, why we’re here, what’s coming next, and how the ladder could fall out on this pseudo “music first” festival. SXSW is a very complicated thing to try and stick in one constructed idea. It’s too vast, and there is way too much going on to box it and ship it off. This is a plus for one aspect of the event, but for others, it’s very limiting. Continue...

When I first heard the single “Tattoo” from the new Van Halen record “A Different Kind of Truth,” I was fully prepared to write the record off as another waste of time from a classic band grasping for air as they try to milk the reunion machine. “Tattoo” is awful. Why the record suit and tie machine decided that would be the single is beyond comprehension. It gives the record a terrible perception upon first listen. Continue...

I always wonder what columnists of the ’70s wrote as the ’80s were in full swing, when the artists that they had once loved, turned into sad portraits of their former selves. Did they realize Paul McCartney, the man who wrote so many classics, could be capable of such crimes against ears as “Silly Love Songs” etc? Did anyone ever imagine that The Rolling Stones, who wrote the masterpiece “Exile on Main Street” would see their singer prance around in the most homoerotic video ever? (Seriously, Mick Jagger and David Bowie likely had sex at some point of the shoot, watch “Dancing in the Streets,” and tell me differently). In those cases it was the time, but did they see it as just, downright bad? Continue...

Cake is a band that a lot of people love, but don’t think about on a daily basis. They’re like Radiohead in the respect that in a lot of people’s minds, they’re the bands who wrote “Creep”, and “The Distance” while, any true fan gets red in the face over consternation with someone not knowing the whole, vastly impressive catalogs of each respective band. Continue...

There are two men living within Hank III. One is the grandson of the greatest singer in Country Music history. And while, Hank III may be a third generation of musical royalty, Hank III is certainly no slouch, his songs are more tear jerky, or barroom rowdy than any manure on the radio. With his lanky gait, and throaty moan that so eerily mirrors Williams Sr, Hank III is a authentic country music outlaw, and his talent is natural unlike others that were lucky enough to have the name, but none of the forbearers talent. Continue...

Shooter Jennings is pissed, and that’s a fantastic thing for the cesspool known as modern country music. On his new song, “Outlaw You” the singer/songwriter verbally bitch slaps his Nashville peers while smiling in their face the whole time, and no one in the CMT universe gets it. “Outlaw you” is a funny track. If you listen to it without pretext, it sounds like every popular country song that’s plastered all over the radio, and that’s the point. But, when you listen to the lyrics, which assuming most modern country-pop radio listeners don’t, they’re being psychologically fisted by someone who actually knows what it’s like to be an outsider, and not just him, he’s a second generation outsider. It’s a seething, transparent language “EFF YOU” to everyone who’s responsible for making one of America’s original art forms into the sad joke it is today. Continue...

Lil Wayne is the king of everything pop culture related these days. After his seminal album “Tha Carter II” the world has had a raging boner for all things Lil Wayne, and no amount of cultural, bedsheet tearing sex appears to mitigate that hard on, anytime soon. From relatively successful rapper, he went to megastar fame with his biggest hit “Lollipop” staying a number one for a mind-baffling amount of time. Continue...